The following discussion of the background art is intended to place the invention in an appropriate context and to allow the unique characteristics and advantages of it to be more fully understood. However, any discussion of the background art throughout the specification should in no way be considered as an express or implied admission that such prior art is widely known or forms part of common general knowledge in the field.
A common initiative in the battle to contain climate change can be described as “activity regulation”. Activity regulation essentially involves implementing regulations that affect the ability of parties to freely engage in activities that are adverse to the environment. A common focus of such regulation is containment of carbon emissions. For example, regulations may seek to impose limits on the quantity of carbon dioxide that may be emitted into the atmosphere by a corporation, industry, region, jurisdiction, or the like.
Such regulations, and initiatives such as the Kyoto protocol, have led to a general concept whereby the ability to pollute might be considered as a tradable resource. For example, the concept of “emissions trading” has become relatively well publicised, whereby a first party trades some or all of its available carbon emission quota to a second party, in exchange for a benefit (which is often financial).
From the concept of emissions trading comes the concept of a “carbon credit”. In the context of carbon emissions trading, in accordance with at least some regimes, a “carbon credit” has an environmental value defined in terms of a quantum of carbon dioxide emission. A party may consume carbon credits by the emission of carbon dioxide. In some situations, a party may accrue carbon credits by partaking in initiatives that offset carbon dioxide emission (for example the planting of trees). Furthermore, a carbon credit has a financial value component. This can be quantified in terms of either a market price (i.e. the amount of money for which a carbon credit is able to be bought or sold in practice) or an intrinsic value (i.e. the economic value of a carbon credit to a particular party in terms of its economic endeavours and/or trading on securities exchanges).
A wide range of emissions trading arrangements have been contemplated and/or implemented worldwide, including “cap and trade” arrangements and “baseline and credit” arrangements. In broad terms, these have been focussed on business-to-business trading.